


Ho Ho Hopefully

by sunshineflying



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Tree, Decorating for Christmas, F/M, Hints of codependency, Home for Christmas, Minor Character Death, Snow, delayed flights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21990718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineflying/pseuds/sunshineflying
Summary: Hux is trying to get home to Rey for the holidays, but the weather has other plans. Inspired by a song, the two travel different paths to finally find each other again.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Rey
Kudos: 20
Collections: Reyuxmas 2019





	Ho Ho Hopefully

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to Mari for being a wonderful beta, and don't be too mad about Millicent please! 
> 
> The fic is inspired by the song Ho Ho Hopefully by The Maine. [Listen along!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AUmi6iyQk8)

_December first I'm in a foreign state  
I'm running late, I'm all alone  
Wishing I was home with you, baby  
She's got a way of making things okay  
When she's not around, when she's not around  
I'm going crazy_

“You really can’t get me on any earlier flights?”

He’s been pleading with the gate agent, doing his very best to try not to absolutely explode at them, even though he’d like nothing better than to completely go off on her. She’s been clicking and moving things around, but her frown just keeps growing. 

“I’m very sorry, sir,” she says. “With this blizzard just now hitting us, the soonest we could get you out would be after the storm is predicted to pass, in about four days.”

Hux looks around and glances at the radar. “Are there any airports near here I could fly out of sooner? I’ll drive. Hundreds of miles if I have to. I _have_ to get home,” he says through gritted teeth.

“We all do, buddy!” shouts a disgruntled man in the line behind him.

Hux briefly glares over his shoulder, and then turns back around to face the gate agent. She’s looking around to answer him, but frowns and shakes her head. “The only option is to drive south and to fly out of Charlotte.”

“I’ll do it. How long of a drive is it?”

“Figure it out later!” shouts an impatient woman behind him.

“We can fly you out in two days,” says the gate agent. “Will that work for you?”

Hux nods, just as anxious to get things moving as the people behind him. A few moments later, she hands him a printed ticket and he’s sent on his way. Hux wheels his bag behind him and hopes there’s a car with all-wheel drive still available somewhere in the airport. He’s lamenting the fact that he’d agreed to go on a business trip to the east coast when they could be hit with a horrible blizzard at any time. Though he hadn’t expected to suffer so greatly in Washington D.C., he’s glad he at least has a way out.

Hux does the best he can, flashing the company credit card at the _Enterprise_ rental desk, and gets the last Subaru Forester in their inventory. He waits, standing next to his bag and checking the approximate route — plenty of traffic due to weather, of course — dreading the long drive ahead. He knows it’s practical to stop somewhere for the night, but the GPS is routing him as far west as possible, and he really doesn’t relish the thought of staying in Appalachia for the night. 

Once his car is brought around and he takes a look outside, he sighs and contemplates when it’s best to call Rey. He knows she’ll be worried.

He opts to wait until he’s on the road, GPS and bluetooth speaker programmed so he can have two hands on the wheel but his heart and mind in Denver. Denver, the city he never thought he’d end up in, the one that now housed him and the love of his life.

Just ten minutes out of D.C., he asks the smart bluetooth system to call Rey, and he hears the familiar ringing. Each ring that passes without her answering stirs an anxiety in him. Maybe she’s angry with him, knowing he won’t be home tomorrow like he’d promised.

“Hello,” she answers, her voice a warm, familiar hum in his ears.

Hux takes a breath. “Rey, I have bad news.”

The line is quiet; he knows her silence is disappointment, already bubbling to the surface. She’s not even trying to hide it. 

“How long are you delayed?” she asks.

She’s about to enter the busiest time of year, and tomorrow is her last free weekend until after Christmas. Hux always has weekends off, but retail and office jobs just don’t mix, and they _always_ decorate the tree together. It’s a tradition that they’ve never, ever broken, in their five years of dating — until now.

“The soonest I could fly out is in two days, from Charlotte.”

There’s more crackling on the other end. Finally, she asks, “How are you getting there?”

“I’m driving.”

More silence. It’s beginning to irk him, the white noise that fills his ears every moment Rey isn’t speaking to him. Never before has he worried what someone thinks of him, but Rey — her opinion means more to him than he could quantify. He’s borderline dependent on her, and he knows they’re in that dangerous territory.

“Is that safe?” she asks finally.

He shrugs, though she can’t see it. “Doesn’t matter,” he replies. “It was either that, or wait four days for a flight out of D.C.”

This time he hears her sigh fill the white noise, heavy with disappointment. “So no tree?” she asks.

Her voice sounds airy, dripping with emotion that he knows she’s trying desperately to hide. “Rey,” he begins, knowing what he’s about to say could really upset her. “I want you to decorate without me.”

“No.”

It’s silly, how much one Christmas tradition has come to mean to them. But it reminds them of where they started, and how far they’ve come. Some peoples’ holiday ornaments contain a lifetime of memories. Though their childhoods never afforded them that luxury, they’ve curated a collection of memories hanging from branches over the past five years that suit them just as well. 

“Rey, I’m going to be there soon. We could try to find times between our shifts, if you want, but…”

She sighs again, and he pauses his statement.

“I’m doing the best that I can, pet.”

“I know.”

He hears the trembling in her voice this time, and he knows there’s more she’s not saying. He knows what it is, too.

“It’ll be okay. Just put on the music, leave the star for when I get home,” he says softly. 

Hux is rarely tender; most would describe him as gruff and impatient, borderline rude. But he’s softened around Rey, the two of them bonding over their pasts, and their shared experiences since meeting. 

Softly, she says, “I’ll leave you some ornaments, too.”

He smiles, pleased that she’s finally showing some optimism. “Only the most boring ones.”

“Of course,” she replies; he hears the smile in her voice and knows he’s quelled her worry, at least for now. 

“I promise you, I’ll be home as soon as I can be,” he says. “I can even stop by the shop when I get to town, before I even go home.”

She breathes out. “That’s not necessary. I’ll give you a good cuddle after work.”

“Lovely,” he replies. “I’ll call you when I get to Charlotte, alright? I have to focus on the road for a while.”

“How long of a drive is it?” she wonders.

Hux glances to the GPS. “Taking into account the weather and traffic, the current estimate is seven hours and forty minutes,” he says.

“Be safe.”

“Always,” he answers.

She breathes out again, a gentle little laugh. He’s glad he’s turned her mood around. “Talk to you soon,” he says.

“Bye. Love you.”

Hux’s chest aches; he knows how much this is probably bothering her, and how hard she’s trying to keep her chin up. “You too,” he answers.

She ends the phone call before he can backtrack and talk to her some more. He’d talk to her the whole drive if he could. But Rey needs to sleep before long, grueling hours in retail, because he knows how testy she can get on very little sleep.

Besides, the snow is picking up outside, and he promised her he’d get home safe. He needs to keep true to his word.

_We like to talk about the plans we make  
And things we say when we're together  
I hope for better weather this year  
But you my dear, need to know  
This year I want you alone_

After hanging up the phone, Rey stuffs it in her pocket and looks around the living room of their apartment. It’s nothing fancy, a cookie cutter building surrounded by other cookie cutter buildings. But she’s tried to make it feel like home, putting little plants here and there, interspersed between his brand-new furniture, her secondhand IKEA furniture, and the antiques she’s found since moving to Denver. The whole place feels sort of like a haphazard mess, but she feels more at home here than she’d ever felt anywhere else, and Hux doesn’t seem to mind it all. The place had once looked like a showroom, nothing but Hux’s pristine, minimalist decor. But now, five years later, it was an amalgam of Hux and Rey and the scraps of Denver, and it suited her just fine.

Rey switches on the music, just like Hux told her to. It’s their Spotify playlist from years ago, all the cheesy, classic, and often-problematic Christmas songs of their deceased parents’ youth. She remembers the first time they’d played the music, and how she’d been so shocked at how beautiful his voice was as he hummed along. They sang _Baby, It’s Cold Outside_ together. They laughed. Hux was a different man at home than at work, but she couldn’t imagine him any other way than what he was to her: stoic, but supportive. He could make her laugh or roll her eyes when she was feeling down, and knew just how hard to push when she was being stubborn and insufferable. He created a balance she’d been lacking in her life.

She rolls up the sleeves of her oversized jumper — or maybe it’s Hux’s, it’s hard to tell at this point — and gets to work. First, she puts up their tree, a boxed, fake tree they’d bought their first winter living together. It was still in great shape, a six foot tall tree with plenty of branches and all the lights built in. It wasn’t until she’d strung the tinsel around and realized that she’d be hanging the ornaments alone that the ache returned to her chest.

The first ornament she pulled from the box was a small frame on a snowflake, something that, to most, would be made during a child’s formative years, probably in elementary school. But Hux had made it when he was out of college, at Rey’s insistence. It held a copy of the only photo he had of himself and his mother. He looked to be about elementary age, and he’d stolen it from his father shortly after his mother passed away. She’d heard the story and knew how much the ornament meant to him. Rey envied him for having a photo at all. She had none, nor did she know who her birth parents were. Just like always, she hangs the ornament front and center on the tree, the crowning glory, aside from the star on top.

The next ornament she pulls from the box is a ceramic tabby cat, a near-exact copy of Millicent, Hux’s cat. It hurt her heart to look at, and she had to set it down.

Rey retreated to the kitchen to brew herself up some tea; she’d need it, to get through decorating the tree all alone.

_Ho ho hopefully this holiday will make us believe that  
We're exactly where we're supposed to be  
And we're ho ho hoping that  
We all come back and as a matter of fact I know  
We're exactly where we're supposed to be  
Together by this Christmas tree_

After fixing herself a perfect cup of Earl Grey, Rey returns to work in the living room of their apartment, a dull ache in her chest as she does it by herself. Instead of the ornament that had hurt so much before, she pulls a different one from the box.

It’s a ceramic mountain, the words _Denver, Colorado_ across the front of it in sweeping capital letters. It was the first thing she’d bought after moving to Denver, choosing it solely because it was the cheapest flight for her when she first decided to leave England. It had been foolish of her, but she was eighteen and wanted to get as far away from foster homes as possible. Her childhood had been an absolute nightmare.

Quite literally, she’d run into Hux at the airport, nearly pummeling him over in an attempt to find the exit. She felt a little frantic at the time and only half-remembered their conversation, but he remembers it all, to this day. He reminds her all the time about how young and lost she’d looked, but so tough and determined. He’d been immediately intrigued.

From that moment on, they’d been in each other’s lives. They’d walked towards the exit together, Hux discerning from conversation that she had yet to find a place to live. He had a spare bedroom, so it seemed to work out. They’d started as roommates, and that’s all they’d been for a while after she’d first moved in.

Rey looks around at how much the apartment had changed since she’d moved in; it warmed her heart to see the way their two very different personalities could mesh into one cohesive home. 

It made her miss him even more.

_We go together like the winter and this sweater  
And she makes me feel, she makes me feel alive inside  
And when I look into her eyes, I see the blue and green  
Like Christmas lights, like Christmas lights  
Oh, what a sight_

Arriving in Charlotte fills Hux with more relief than he ever thought possible. The car has been returned, he hasn’t needed to white-knuckle drive for several hours at least, and his flight is blessedly only forty minutes delayed. It’s coming in from Chicago, which is just beginning to get show, so Hux narrowly escaped yet another horrific delay.

As he waits, he gazes around the airport and wonders how Rey is doing now. The tree is likely set up, and she’s probably asleep now. He hadn’t expected it, but he feels a deep swelling of disappointment that he’d had to miss their annual tradition. He knew it was risky, traveling so close to the holidays, but he’d had little choice in the matter. Work needed him to go, so he’d gone. The end. But now he was mere hours away from seeing Rey, and being home, and the thought was fueling him to stay awake.

He glances down at his phone to see what time it is. He’d driven straight through; it’s five a.m., and he’s exhausted. 

The picture on his phone stops him in his tracks; he’s so used to just glancing that when he takes a real, hard look at the photo, his heart aches all over again. 

It’s the two of them, almost two years ago now, standing in front of their Christmas tree. In Hux’s arms is his disgruntled orange cat, Millicent. She’s looking right at Rey’s camera, her arm outstretched to do her best to take a selfie. It was one of the only good photos they got of Millicent, and the last before she’d gotten sick and passed away.

She’d passed on February 10th, just four days before Hux’s birthday. He’d been devastated; he’d adopted the cat with his mother as a child, and she’d gotten him through the loss of his mother, and less so the loss of his father. She was as much a companion as she was a therapy animal, and losing her hit him nearly as hard as the loss of his mother.

Rey had been there for him, taking time off work even if she realistically couldn’t, and never leaving his side. They’d spent hours curled up on the sofa together, Hux moping and Rey reassuring him that everything would be okay. 

He’d kissed her the night of February 11th, changing things forever.

_She says I've got a way of making everything okay  
She's not alone, she's not alone, and never will be  
Ho ho hopefully this year I'll have you alone_

Rey wakes to her alarm at six a.m., mentally preparing herself for a long day working retail. The holidays were such a headache, but she did what she could to help put a roof over their heads and food on the table. They were a team; she’d started out living with him for free, but insisted very early on that she wanted to pay her way.

As she sips her coffee, Rey stands by the tree and gazes out their front window at the dark sky. As she looks up, she wonders if Hux is finally on his way. She hadn’t gotten a text from him, but knows he doesn’t send them often. She’ll probably be at work when he gets in, meaning she won’t see him until much later. The thought makes her heart ache.

She glances down at her phone and scrolls through her contacts, wondering against all hope if maybe someone will have some sympathy for her.

Meanwhile, Hux gazes down out the window of his airplane, watching as the clouds soar by beneath them. He has no idea how close he is to home, but has an inkling that Rey is at work and that she’ll be lamenting that fact all the way until she’s finally allowed to go home. 

He thinks on his feet, calculating how long it’ll take to get home from the airport, and then how long to go back into town to visit Rey. She’ll be busy at work, but he could at least sneak in a hug.

Plan in mind, Hux leans back in his seat and waits impatiently for their arrival in Denver. 

Soon. He’ll be home very soon.

_Ho ho hopefully this holiday will make us believe that  
We're exactly where we're supposed to be  
And we're ho ho hoping that  
We all come back and as a matter of fact I know  
We're exactly where we're supposed to be  
Together by this Christmas tree_

When the taxi finally drops him off at their apartment, Hux shakes a sprinkling of snow off of his jacket and takes the stairs two at a time. He doesn’t often get that giddy, childlike swell of excitement in his gut, but it’s been a while since he’s seen Rey, and he knows that she’ll be just as excited to see him.

He unlocks the door and steps inside, but stops in his tracks as he realizes that the lights are on. The tree is lit up. 

Rey is standing in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room, cup of tea in hand. Her eyes go wide, like she hadn’t expected him to be home quite so soon. She sets down the tea, spilling a little on the countertop. 

“You didn’t text me!” she exclaims, before rushing towards him.

He releases his hold on the roller bag he’d been dragging behind him and braces himself for the massive impact of her leaping into his arms. “I was so tired,” he explains. “I drove all night.”

“I’m glad you’re home.”

Rey’s arms wrap around his shoulders and she beams, so pleased to finally have him home. “I missed you,” she adds.

“Missed you,” he adds.

They separate, but only enough so that Rey can drape an arm around his waist and turn to gesture to the tree. “It’s not as pretty as when we do it together, but it’s something,” she says.

Hux gives the tree one quick glance over before he says, “It looks wonderful.” 

He kisses her forehead and allows her to snuggle closer to him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” he wonders aloud after a beat.

Rey laughs. “Rose and Finn are splitting my shift for me,” she explains. “I begged and pleaded and promised cookies.”

“Well, they’d be fools not to do what you ask for a plate of your cookies,” Hux replies.

“My thoughts exactly.”

She looks up at him, beyond pleased that he’s finally back home, and they’re in each other’s arms. He leans forward, pressing his lips to Rey’s. Sweetly, in just a whisper for the two of them, she speaks.

“Welcome home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter at armitagehoox!


End file.
